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Home » New Knoxville and Minster to face off for district title on Saturday

New Knoxville and Minster to face off for district title on Saturday

WAPAKONETA — The New Knoxville and Minster girls basketball teams will meet for a Division IV district title after both earned double-digit wins over their opponents from the east on Thursday night at Wapakoneta.

New Knoxville held the Ada Bulldogs to just seven second-half points and won its 18th straight game in a 50-20 victory to start the night. Haley Horstman scored 13 points and Paige Lehman added 12 points with a 4 of 4 night from both the floor and the free throw line. Meg Reineke scored nine points for the Rangers.

Minster made nearly half of the 61 shots it put up in a 77-57 victory over Upper Scioto Valley in the second game. Kayla Richard led Minster with 17 points on 7 of 9 shooting before having to leave the game in the fourth quarter with a sore hip after hitting the floor. Lauren Roetgerman added 16 points and 6 of 9 shooting. Alexis Wuebker, who made 3 of 5 shots in the first quarter, finished the game with 15 points.

The Rangers and Wildcats will play at 7 p.m. on Saturday at Wapakoneta for the right to advance to the regional tournament in Tipp City.

“It’s going to be a good game,” New Knoxville head coach Tim Hegemier said. “Minster has three good outside players. I think we’ll go into that game knowing how we need to play the ball and how we need to defend them to win that game. Whether we get it done or not, that’s two different things.”

Minster won the regular season match-up between the teams 54-42, but Minster head coach Nann Stechschulte said a game played almost three months ago is moot.

“What we did early doesn’t mean anything,” Stechschulte said. “Throw all that out. We’re two different teams back in game five.”

That loss to Minster dropped the Rangers to 2-3 at that point. Since, they’ve gone 18-1.

“You always want to be playing your best basketball towards the end of the season,” Hegemier said. “We started out slow, don’t ask me why. But we also played some very good teams. It felt like we couldn’t get our head above the water, but I just told myself to be patient. This is a good team. It will come, and they’ve played pretty good basketball for a while now.”